Beth Kempton - Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year: A little book of festive joy

Scribner

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Copyright 2019 by Beth Kempton

Originally published in Great Britain in 2019 by Little, Brown Book Group UK as Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year

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First Scribner hardcover edition October 2020

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Cover design by Jaya Miceli

Cover artwork by Aleksandarvelasevic / Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-5185-0

ISBN 978-1-9821-5187-4 (ebook)

To my parents and brothers, for teaching me about Christmas magic

To Mr. K, Sienna, and Maia, for keeping that magic alive

This book is for life, not just for Christmas.

Think of it as a quiet retreat from all the noise, and a guide to honoring a special season without sacrificing your well-being. I hope it inspires connection, belonging, self-care, nourishment, and joy, and a little bit of festive magic.

This collection of stories, advice, and ideas is based in the belief that there is no single way to approach Christmas. It brings together all kinds of Christmases, celebrated in all kinds of ways by all kinds of people.

Its a portrait of us as human beings, pausing in the rush of life to celebrate, to acknowledge those we love and those we miss, to mark the passing of another year, and to make peace and pies, marmalade and memories.

A gentle word of warningthis book offers no military strategy for executing the perfect Christmas. It is more likely to compel you to ditch half your plans and open up space for spontaneity. It will make you question convention and inherited tradition in order to shape a celebration that recognizes what you really need and treasure most.

It will also encourage you to use the precious time between Christmas and New Years Day to reflect and plan. By the end, instead of heading into January exhausted and lethargic, with lingering dissatisfaction and a credit card hangover, you can go forth feeling rested and rejuvenated, with fresh motivation and a hopeful heart.

The world shifted in 2020, and times have been challenging in many ways. May Calm Christmas be a lantern leading you through the darkness of winter, back to the real enchantment of the season. I hope it brings much joy.

Wishing you a Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Beth Kempton

Devon, England, 2020

Of all the scenarios I had imagined for celebrating the first Christmas after my wedding, and the expected birth of our first child on December 11, none of them involved being at a hospital in the middle of a raging storm on Christmas Eve. But then, babies have a habit of sending carefully crafted plans into disarray.

I was supposed to have a lovely home birth, all gentle breathing and candles and a warm birthing pool. But with each passing day beyond our daughters due date, that home birth started to look less likely, and I could feel my sense of control disintegrating, along with the last vestige of my image of a perfect Christmas.

The vision of us snuggled up with our sleeping newborn by the twinkling lights of the treegone.

Opening sweet baby gifts as we sipped mulled winegone.

Tucking into the lavish Christmas dinner we had managed to concoct as clever, multitasking new parentsgone.

One by one, the dreams vanished as we edged closer to December 23, when the doctors would insist on inducing.

By the time Christmas Eve rolled in on the wings of that burly storm, I was in a sterile hospital ward with a bag of barbecue-flavor chips, rationing myself to one after each contraction. No Christmas tree, no roast dinner, no presents, no guests, no jolly raising of glasses of bubbly. Just me and my husband and fifteen other pregnant women, all sectioned off behind white plastic curtains, identifiable only by their moans or soft chatter or occasional terrifying screams.

Many hours later, we were moved into a private room for the latter stages of labor. I stood by the wide window overlooking the Brighton seashore and tried to breathe deeply. My breathing was just about the only thing left that I could hope to control, and I watched the sea foam glowing under streetlights and a distant pier. Glancing at the clock,I realized midnight was approaching. Our baby girl would be born on Christmas Day. And still the thunder raged on.

My ideas about Christmas changed forever that night. Sienna May was born as Chopin played serenely in the background and a giant bolt of lightning cracked across the sky, bringing her and a little Christmas magic into our world.

This was the Christmas that made me a mama. And it was the one that made me realize Christmas never goes quite according to plan.

For some, Christmas is a time of great anticipation, indulgence, and delight. A precious time for feasting and family, togetherness and treats. For others, its a chance to escape the day-to-day and travel back to a more innocent time. But for many, it is yet another struggle at the end of a difficult year.

Just as there is no one shape of a family, there is no one way to do Christmas. Yet we are repeatedly shown the same versions of a perfect Christmas in the media. As a result, for many, it has become a time of unrealistic expectations and exhaustion.

The truth is our take on the festive season ebbs and flows as we move through life, as children grow up and move away, as older generations pass and new generations are born. We all approach it from different backgrounds, with our own particular ideas about how it should be.

Christmas is at once almost universally recognized and intensely individual. But while the details may vary, the opportunity for love and light is shared.

I hope Calm Christmas will help you reconnect with all that Christmas can bea source of true joy.

Im thirteen years old and stumble across a book my mum bought in a rare moment of indulgence. Country Christmas1is a large, dark green hardcover. A giant wreath of holly, ivy berries, bay leaves, and tartan ribbons fills the cover. As winter closes in, I reach for that book and curl up to read all about Christmas in the countryside. Calm descends like a gentle snowfall on my early teenage years.

Fast-forward three decades and my mum finds Country Christmas